Fair Maiden's Honour
by Slightly Sinister Sinestra
Summary: Q shows up demanding the impossible, determined to hurt Picard and his crew. Then he shows up to save them from himself. Who's who when you're dealing with shapeshifting, realitydefying entities? Possible PicardQ later.
1. Chapter 1

Okay. My primary interest in the Star Trek fandom is Q. He's pretty much the only element of the pantheon that I have any knowledge of, so you'll have to forgive the glaring mistakes you'll undoubtedly find here regarding the Star Trek universe. I just got kind of hooked on him recently, and I had to write _something_ to get it out of my system. I've read anything I could get my hands on around him, which isn't much, I'll grant you. This is primarily a Q/Picard story, but it takes 'The Q and the Grey' and 'Q2' into account. Enjoy.

"Fair Maiden's Honour"

Chapter 1

"Captain."

Picard turned towards the viewscreen, warned by a note of urgency in Data's voice that something was amiss. It took a moment for what he saw to make sense to him, but once it did he was hard pressed to restrain a gasp. Deanna wasn't so restrained.

"Captain!" she exclaimed, standing. Will was at her side in an instant, the pair of them standing behind him as they looked out on a sight they hadn't seen in a decade. The barrier constructed itself before the Enterprise exacty as it had done years before, Data automatically halting the ship to prevent collision. Blue energy crackled between the red 'blocks' that formed the wall, enclosing Enterprise in a sphere as soon as their forward movement stopped. The scene was horribly familiar, a reminder of one of their first trials. Picard felt a bubble of apprehension rise in his chest. For all he had come to respect, and even tentatively trust, the entity responsible for this, it was no good omen. In only two instances had this enclosure been used against them, and neither had been good.

"Q!" he called, knowing that the entity was there. He just hadn't revealed himself. "Q? What's this about, Q?"

"What do you think, mon capitaine?" a voice drawled coldly. Picard turned, anger and apprehension warring in him. Then, seeing the entity lounging insolently in his chair, the captain's chair, the anger leapt to the fore.

"Q!" he snapped. "Get up! What the devil do you think you're up to now!?" He ranged himself over the other 'man', stance automatically combative. Q only smirked, rolling his eyes in faux exasperation.

"Now now, mon capitaine! Where _are_ your manners?"

"What do you want, Q?" Riker spoke up coolly, adding his height and bearing to the captain's stand. Will's relationship with this being had never been comfortable, and he'd never had the experiences that Picard and Q had shared, experiences that had led to a thaw, however slight, in their antagonism. But Picard was glad of the support. There was something ... off ... about Q. His pose was wrong. When Q lounged, he _lounged_, draping himself over whatever surface was available as if gravity and all sense of propriety were things that only troubled lesser beings. Which was true, to a degree. This time there was tension under the relaxed sprawl, a sense of coiled energy snapping to be released. It made Picard uneasy.

"What do I want?" Q repeated, as if pondering the question. "What do I want?" He stood in one smooth move, zoning in on Picard, stepping provocatively into the captain's personal space and leaning in until his mouth was poised beside Picard's ear. "Why, you, Jean-Luc," he whispered.

Picard snapped back, standing on Will's foot in the process. He shouldn't have. He was more or less used to Q's disregard for human conventions of distance and politeness, for the entity's gratuitous use of innuendo. But that wasn't what bothered him. Usually such utterances came with mocking pretense of sincerity, a sense of levity, or waspish reflex to some imagined slight. Not this ... hunger, this bitter seriousness. This wasn't some playful attempt to unsettle Picard. There was something deeper agenda here. And Picard didn't like it.

"Q!" he barked, reproach and warning in his voice. He settled warily on the balls of his feet, a sudden adrenalin surge urging fight or flight. A ridiculous urge. There was nowhere he could go that Q couldn't find instantly, and to think of fighting the entity ...ridiculous. But it was instinct, something in the other's stance prompting the age-old response to danger. Troi picked it up, Will not far behind her. The security officer was already in combat stance.

"Q, what is this?" Picard demanded harshly. "What do you _really_ want?!"

The entity tipped his head to one side consideringly, and smiled. A hard smile, cold and somehow emotionless. It looked wrong on the mobile face. Q's moods were quick and mercurial, flashes of heat and temper. Cold menace wasn't him.

Q shifted, prowling towards him, movements tight and economical, no trace of his usual flamboyance. Picard fought the urge to back away again. It served no purpose. The entity stopped an inch away from him, ignoring Riker's move to the captain's shoulder in response. The dark eyes bored into him, and Picard frowned. Something was there, something he could just sense, but couldn't pin. This was wrong. There was an edge of ... unreality to it, something false. Of course, with Q so many things were false, but ...

"I want you, Jean-Luc," the entity stated, almost a command. "I'm tired of waiting. I want you, and I'm going to have you. I want you on your knees, I want to use you until the convulsions of your feeble human body become your death throes, and I want it _now_. I want to take you here, in front of your precious crew, and I want you to submit to me. And I will have what I want, Jean-Luc. Make no mistake."

Picard stared. At first, all he felt was shock, and then a vast sense of disbelief washed over him. The feeling of unreality lanced through him again, a disconnected-ness. This simply wasn't happening. In no universe would Q make such a demand. It simply wasn't possible. With that thought, a laugh bubbled up in his throat, incredulous and demanding to be released. And he couldn't hold it. It spilled out of him, harsh and unbelieving, right in Q's face, an inch away. It was all the entity needed.

In a blink Picard was locked against the viewer, invisible arms clamping his limbs cruelly, pinning him spread-eagled. Another instant, a burst of white light, and he was unclothed.

Shocked stillness reigned for all of a second, then Security was leaping for Q's back, phaser out but held as a club. The entity span, hands flashing up, and the hapless man was blasted back over the control panel. Enraged, incomprehending, his security officer struggled back to his feet, a beastial snarl on his face, and prepared to leap again. Picard felt the instant slow, time taking on the consistency of treacle as he moved and Q raised one hand, a cruel smirk on his face, and in that eternal instant Jean-Luc understood that Q meant it. With a wave of his hand, Q would kill the man, or worse, and nothing they could do would prevent it. _Q meant it._

The moment shattered, shards of it falling around Picard as he barked out a hoarse, desperate command. "HOLD! HOLD, OFFICER!" The man's leap had begun, fury still etching his features, and Picard knew a moment's panicked horror, when Geordi tackled him from behind. They spilled to the floor behind the panel, temporarily safe. Picard gasped out a sigh of relief, ignoring the man's roar of stunned rage. And Q turned back to him.

Their gazes locked, power coursing into Picard from that stare, fierce and possessive and desperate. Internally, Jean-Luc shrank from it, pulling back to try and regain inner command of his situation. He was shaken down to the bone. It happened so fast. Moments from the first sight of the barrier, to Q's impossible declaration, to this untenable situation. He had to withdraw, to view this objectively, to regain his balance. But the speed of it, the _wrongness_ of it, wouldn't release him. He'd _seen_ Q angry, seen him desperate, seen him threatening. Never had he seen the entity like this. There was no avenue of action, no escape, no test. Only the threat and the demand. Only in their first meeting had he thought Q capable of this, before the first test, when there had only been the trial and the threat of death if he did not plead guilty. But even then he'd somehow known that the entity could be reasoned with. Not here. Not now.

He stared at the poised figure. It looked like Q. That face, with its mobile features, that liquid, expressive voice, the costume of a Starfleet captain, all fit his memories of the mercurial entity. But the stance, the body language, did not. There was a leashed energy there that Q had never had. Q's boundless energy was expressed in constant movement, in parlour tricks and gestures, in flamboyant speech and dramatic flair. For all that they had known his power, for all his constant demonstrations of it, Q had seemed more exasperating than overtly threatening. A cosmic trickster, with wisdom disguised under facetious innuendo, an omnipotent Shakespearean Fool. Not this ... this predator.

His mind shied away from the thought. On Earth, throughout history, there'd been more than one kind of predator. Q's demand, which he'd been trying to ignore, ripped through him, reminding him of his incredibly vunerable position. He was naked, exposed, hung on a wall for the entity's viewing pleasure, and that entity wanted ... what? To rape him? To force him? Why?

"Q ... What's happened, Q? What's wrong?" he asked, unable to fully disguise the desperation in his own voice. "If you'd just tell us, perhaps we could ..."

In a flash, Q was in front of him. No. Right up against him, dark eyes glimmering with sadistic amusement. Q's lips brushed his ear, and Jean-Luc shuddered. Will moved towards them convulsively. Deanna had her fists clenched at her sides, tears in her eyes, and Geordi was struggling desperately to hold Security down. Data was still, but poised to move at the slightest opportunity. Picard warned them silently to be still, desperate, knowing that Q _would_ hurt them if they tried to interfere.

"Perhaps you could what, mon capitaine?" the entity whispered, tracing a finger possessively over Jean-Luc's jaw. "Help me?" A dark chuckle. "Now why, Jean-Luc, would you want to do that? What have I ever done for you? Do tell, mon capitaine. Explain to me why you should wish to aid little old me."

Picard swallowed. Was that it? His way out? Did Q simply wish to know they understood all he'd done? Was this simply his pride demanding that they acknowledge him? But no. Looking into that cruel gaze, he knew this was something more. Whatever this Q wanted, it was unpleasant, and while there was little he wouldn't offer of himself to keep his crew safe, that did not mean he would play this game any more than he had to.

"You know that I understand what you've done for us, Q," he said as calmly as possible, meeting that hungry stare. "What do you want?"

For a moment Q stared back, considering, then his eyes hardened. He stepped back, turning suddenly to wave his hand over the others. Jean-luc started, straining in his bonds, a hoarse yell escaping. "Q!" Light flashed, blinding him momentarily. When his sight cleared, he looked around desperately for his crew. He found them, standing exactly as they had been before, and he sagged slightly in relief. It didn't last long, though. Will looked at him desperately, something approaching panic in his eyes.

"Captain," he gasped. "I can't move!"

"Of course you can't, you pathetic piece of pre-evolutionary flotsam," Q snarled. "I can't have you interfering."

"Interfering?" Picard asked sharply. "With what?"

Q turned back to face him, that cold smile back on his face. He reached out, tracing his hand along the centre of Picard's chest, and lower. His eyes followed the touch possessively, then flashed up to the captain's face, and away again, almost coyly. A vicious smirk appeared as he grabbed down, and squeezed. Jean-Luc bit back a hoarse scream of shock and violation. Deanna cried out, anguish in her voice. "Captain!"

Q looked back up, releasing him again. "Why, with your 'seduction', Jean-Luc," he laughed softly, his tone twisting that word into something terrible. Raw horror rippled through his victim, peaking as the entity raised a hand slowly and exaggeratedly to snap his fingers.

Before Q's next 'parlour trick' could manifest, though, a shudder ripped through the ship, knocking the entity to one side. Staggering to regain his balance, Q looked up, past Picard, into the viewer. Whatever he saw caused a tide of rage and anticipation to flow over his features, and Picard strained to see behind him.

"Captain!" Data called. "Something is attacking Q's forcefield. It's on the verge of collapse!"

"No it's not!" Q snapped back, sharply, and snapped his fingers. Picard felt hope fall a little, but not die. Someone powerful enough to damage Q's shield was trying to interfere. At the very least, Q would have to focus on fighting them. There was a reprieve. But he couldn't count solely on this 'rescuer'. He had to help.

"Is it the Continuum, Q?" he called mockingly. "Have they come to punish you again?" Q snarled, hand flashing at him. Some force ripped Picard away from the viewer and tossed him behind Q. He fetched up at the foot of his chair, next to Will, who glanced down at him desperately. He shook his head breathlessly, knowing no more what to do than Will did. Then he looked back at the entity poised before the viewer, stance ready and anticipatory as any Klingon.

"Oh, no, Jean-Luc," he whispered laughingly. "Not the Continuum. A sole Q, renegade. No match for me. Don't get your hopes up, mon capitaine. I am the most powerful of the Q. This little upstart hasn't a hope."

Picard frowned. Wrongness again. Q had never made mention of comparative power levels amongst the Q before, and the real fear he had showed before when speaking of the Continuum made doubtful any such claim to dominance. Their Q simply wasn't that confident in his ability to stand up to a being as powerful as he, or more. When he'd been human, everything scared him. If there _were_ levels of power among the Q, their Q would not be an agressor. He was simply too cowardly, or cautious, if you wanted to be polite about it.

Picard switched his attention to the 'enemy' onscreen, wanting to weigh up the force ranged against Q. The barrier was rippling, bulging inward at one massive point, the blue energy flashing angrily. Then Q shifted, and the shield flexed outward against the invading force. For a moment, Picard saw an energy sphere, like the one that had persued them the first time, being thrown back from Q's defense. Definitely another Q, then. But why would a single Q want to protect them? Or even interfere? If they wanted to attack Q, they could wait until he'd done, was moving on, and thus more vunerable. It made no tactical sense to attack while Q had such a powerful defense in place. Unless they had another objective. Unless they were trying to interfere specifically with what Q was doing now. But why would another Q want to do that?

He felt the edge of a thought, the edge of understanding. That was the question, all right. There was something about the answer to that question that would tell him what was going on.

Q, apparently satisfied that his enemy had been repulsed for now, turned back to him, intimidation in every line of him, but Jean-Luc was calmer now. He had a path of inquiry to persue, a plan of action in a way, and he was now in _his_ element. Creative problem solving was part and parcel of his mission. This was simply a more personal and potentially deadly problem than most. Since he had no way to directly take on an entity this powerful, he had to find a way to discomfit him, to delay the inevitable until this other entity, who _could_ fight, got through. That meant drawing him out, trying to find the root of the encounter.

"Who is he, Q?" he asked calmly. "Why is he hunting you?"

"He is not!" Q spat. "No-one hunts me! No-one!"

Touch. Arrogance, but desperate. Maybe no-one had hunted him before, but they were doing it now, and that frightened Q. But that didn't make sense either, because Q _had_ been hunted. Picard had been there! The Calamarain had hunted him, had almost killed him. Q knew what it was to be hunted. Admittedly, not as himself, as an all-powerful entity who could reshape reality at will, but still. He felt the edge of understanding again, an insistant prodding in the back of his mind that there was an incredibly simple answer to this, if only he could see it.

"Q ..." he began.

"Stop calling me that!" the entity roared, striding over to him and hauling him to his feet. Physically. With the approximation of human hands the entity had made for himself. Wrong again. Q touched people, moved into personal space on a regular basis, had apparently no conception of inappropriate contact, but when angry he drew back to attack with his powers. But the reaction to the name tilted Picard off balance. Q himself had told him that was how they may address him, that it was the name of both his species, and the individuals within it. Why ...

"Be silent, you pathetic little mortal," Q hissed. "You think I can't see every little thought in your head? I'm here for one reason, and I'll stand no more procrastination! You're mine, I want you, and you're going to submit, or I will destroy each and every member of your precious crew in ways too terrible for a mortal mind to encompass! Now on your knees!" He dropped Picard unceremoniously, glancing behind him only once to check the viewer. There was no sign of the other Q.

Picard squeezed his eyes shut. There was no more time. He couldn't allow his crew to be killed simply because he didn't want to be used that way. He had no choice. There was no point in making the entity angrier, and if he lived he could always pick up the pieces later.

"Captain," Deanna whispered, voice strangled. He wanted to comfort her. He was furious at Q for doing this where she could feel it. In doing so, the entity was violating both of them. But he forced it down, blanking his mind in preparation to endure. And in that moment, as he surrendered his frantic thoughts, as his mind calmed, the answer flashed to the fore. If Q didn't act like Q ...

He opened his eyes, and smiled up at the entity, challenge and promise of retribution in his eyes. The entity withdrew slightly, uneasy suddenly. And with reason. Picard grinned at him. "Q's not going to be happy about this," he murmured. "And I would _never_ underestimate him. He's coming."

"Shut up," the entity snapped.

"It doesn't matter how much stronger than him you are," Picard went on mercilessly. "He doesn't get what he wants by strength. He's the trickster. You don't know _what_ he'll do."

"I said shut up!" In a flash, Picard was braced against his chair, open and vunerable. He drew into himself, as ready as it was possible for him to be for this. Q was coming. He could endure until then. Their Q was coming. And he was _not_ happy.

Q, for it was undoubtedly a Q, drew back behind him, poised to plunge, and he tensed against the expectation of intrusion, sudden panic racing back through him. He couldn't handle this. He just couldn't ...

_And you never have to, mon capitaine. Not from him. He will never touch you._

White light flashed around him, a furious burst that flung the entity forcibly away from him, but it wasn't like before. It wasn't a manifestation of Q's will. It _was_ Q. He could feel the entity around him, holding him. Protecting him. His Q.

The light faded. He was standing again, fully clothed. He stumbled, and an arm caught him about the shoulders, holding him up. He stiffened, looking up quickly. His eyes met deep brown ones, creased at the corners with concern, glimmering with fury. Q looked down at him, a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Careful, mon capitaine," he admonished gently. "Attention on deck!"

He sighed, the force of it like a shudder through him. For a bare moment, he closed his eyes again and leaned his forehead on the other's shoulder. He felt Q stiffen, a tremor running through the tall frame, and his head shot up, glaring around in search of their enemy. Q tightened his arm around him, then stepped away to one side, automatically putting Picard behind him. At the moment, the captain was too shaken to object.

He stepped back, sinking down into his chair. In a moment, Will sat next to him, Deanna with him. He started, looking questioningly at them. They were no longer bound? Will shook his head. Deanna, tears glimmering in her eyes, only clasped his hand. Q had freed them.

"I repulsed you!" the stranger barked, incredulously. "You can't _be_ here! There's no way you could challenge that shield!"

"Must you always be so linear?" Q mocked. Jean-Luc smiled slightly at that. "To coin one of the more barbaric human phrases, there's more than one way to skin a cat."

"Impossible!"

Q rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. "Oh please. Yes, your shield was impenetrable. Yes, you repulsed me. No, I couldn't break through. So," and he shook his head in disappointment, "I didn't break it. I just ... sidestepped it. Simple, really."

"Impossible!" the other entity spluttered.

"You're repeating yourself, darling," their Q smirked. "I didn't alter your shield. I just altered the reality around it. If you can't move an object within the confines of the universe, then move the universe. Really, how much more elementary must it be before your feeble mind can grasp it?"

Picard stared at the pair of entities squaring off on his bridge. Q on one side, poised even now in a dramatic pose of readiness, his doppleganger on the other, taunt and ready for battle. There was incredible tension between them, as sense of power radiating from opposing sources and clashing in the middle. The other Q was more concentrated and compact, the focused and desperate personality that had revealed him as a fraud, while Q seemed more nebulous, shifting and unpredictable. The sense of it awed Picard.

"Captain?" Deanna asked softly. He turned to look at her.

"I ... I can feel them," he whispered, wonderingly. She nodded.

"So," Q challenged softly. His opponent tensed. "Why are you here, Q? I didn't think even _you_ were this foolish. Did you really think you could pull it off? That form is so not your style. It requires someone with ... pzazz. You're simply not up to it, I'm afraid."

"You can't beat me!" the other snapped. Q smirked, tossing his head provocatively.

"Bet?"

"You lunatic insurgent! Don't you see what you've done, Q? You've tainted the Continuum! You with your pathetic humanity! It's their fault! The war is their fault!"

"No!" Q snapped back. "The war was the Continuum's fault. It had it coming! We'd become too stagnant, too repressed and too _boring_. We were dying! Humanity only showed me that now was the time. Humanity and Q! So don't get on your moral high horse with me, Q! Even at my worst, I never tormented an individual like this! My tests _always_ had purpose. What is this besides a petty revenge!"

"You're one to talk!"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm all for revenge, if it doesn't get me hurt. But _you_ were the voice of judgement. You were the one who sentanced me to death by humanity for interfering with species. You were the one who argued for non-interferance, and for treating mortals well! The hypocrisy! For that alone, I'd strike at you. But," and here Q's voice dropped a couple of registers, into something deep and profoundly menacing, "you chose _humanity_ to torment. More, you chose this crew. They are _mine_. Humanity is mine, and these most of all! Did you truly think for one moment that I'd let you harm them!?"

"Let me harm them?" his opponent asked slowly, disbelievingly. The expression that crawled across his face was something between confusion and outright disgust. "Just how close have you gotten to these _creatures_? But no. Don't tell me. I know. And it's _disgusting_! You want to fight for his _honour_? Not survival? His honour. Look what you've become! His paramour!"

"Now hold on a minute!" Q exclaimed.

"NO!" the doppelganger roared, apoplectic. "_You taught him your name! You traitor!!"_

Q froze. He glanced quickly at Picard, stunned. "What?" he asked, very quietly.

"He called this form by your name! He knew that it wasn't you who wore it! He called me Q!"

"He calls all of us Q," Q tried to explain. "They don't see the differenciation."

"But he _did_!" The entity strode up to Q, his physical form spitting in fury. "He called _you_. The flavour of your essence was in his mind and voice as he spoke your name. Traitor! You gave a mortal the key to your essence! You gave yourself to him!"

Q turned away from him, to look at Picard. He looked ... shocked, afraid, and hopeful. He moved towards them, slowly, tentatively. "Jean-Luc? Mon capitaine? Is this true?"

Jean-Luc paused. He felt a sudden chill. Before, he'd been shocked, horrified, furious, but not really frightened. The adrenalin had drowned it out. Now, he was afraid. "What ... What would it mean, Q? If I ... If I had ... known?" Q tilted his head, considering, a nameless emotion in his eyes. "Because I'm not sure did!" Picard hastened to clarify. "I don't know what he means. What ..."

Q leaned forward, resting one hand on the arm of Picard's chair. Deanna, who was closest, stiffened angrily, but there was no threat in this closeness. Unlike the other entity, unlike even his own usual stance, Q was not suggesting anything. He was simply leaning in to hear, supporting his weight on the chair.

"When you said my name, Jean-Luc," he whispered, "what was in your mind? How did you think of me? What form did I take, for you?" His gaze was intense.

Jean-Luc swallowed, a slight smile sliding across his face. "Hm. Puck. The Fool. The Harlequin. Loki. The trickster god who plays with mortals to show them themselves, but all still for his own amusement. My shadowing, possibly benevolent, demon. And a curiously honourable man, with the capacity for self-sacrifice. Flamboyant, dramatic, and quietly loyal. And someone who has rarely, if ever, been thanked for his efforts. Your facade of cynicism is quite convincing. But you can't completely hide your good intentions. You just don't handle people very well. But you try to. And you learn from each encounter. That proves your character. You're my ... friend ..."

He stopped. Q's eyes had widened, shock and delighted pleasure flickering in them before he struggled to disguise it. Then he seemed to surrender, closing his eyes and tilting his face towards Jean-Luc. "He's right," he whispered. "I can feel it when you talk. The words are clumsy," and his eyes flashed open for a moment to sparkle mischieviously, "and maybe not flattering, but I can feel your calling of me. You know my name."

"I told you!" the other Q snapped. Q ignored him, smiling down at Picard, who swallowed again under the gaze.

"What ... What does that mean?" he asked.

"Oh, many things," Q whispered, his voice a caress. He bit his lip, an irrepressable grin fighting to make itself known. Jean-Luc found himself responding, despite continuing worry. Q tilted his head mischieviously at him, stepping back with a coy expression. "So many things, mon capitaine. I can't wait to tell you!"

"Then don't!" Will snapped, surging to his feet. "This is no time for games, Q. Tell us what you mean! If you mean to harm him ..."

Q's grin had slipped, a serious expression replacing it. When Will suggested that, fury flashed to the fore, before slipping back under. Q met the impassioned gaze of his first officer calmly, but the tension had upped again. Picard wanted to move between the antagonists, to protect Will, baffled by the man's defense of him. A curious warmth was growing in his chest at the obvious care his crew had for him. It felt good.

"Firstly," Q ennunciated clearly, "it means that I can defend you with a clean conscience." He turned back to the other Q. "I never told him my name. I can't, without violating his mental barriers. He figured it out himself. Do you get it? A human, with the ability to learn _my_ name, my identity? Humanity has vindicated my interest in them! These humans in particular. If you destroy them now, you risk the future of the Q. We need to learn from them. The Continuum will not let you destroy them now." He paused, gauging the other's reaction. "But you knew that, didn't you? And you rushed to finish the job, knowing that, knowing I'd come ..."

His eyes widened suddenly, and he flung his arms wide, white light flashing in an arc towards the other entity. Picard leapt to his feet beside Will. "Q!" he roared into the after-image. "What the devil ...!" A hand over his mouth shut him up.

"Mon capitaine?" The hand lowered.

Picard was stiff. Wrong Q. The Q behind him wasn't the one who wanted to defend them. Not his Q.

"Your Q?" the voice drawled in his ear. "Yes. He is, mortal. You own him. You have his name. Among us, names have power. You can command him, mortal. You can tell him to back down."

"No," Picard whispered. He wouldn't ...

"Nice try, Q," came a disembodied voice. "Even if he could, he wouldn't. But he knows better. They're not _that_ stupid, despite occasional evidence to the contrary. We're Q, not genies." Q flashed into existence before them, an object in his hands. It was an ancient oil-lamp, a-la Arabian Nights. He tossed it contemptuously from hand to hand. "Three wishes? Want him to be a prince? Hah! No, I don't fancy the role of genie. Perhaps ... you would?" He slung the lamp at the other Q, who released Picard to fend it off. White light flashed again, and the other entity disappeared.

"What happened!?" Picard demanded.

Q smirked. "20th century Disney movie. Aladdin."

"Ah," Data nodded. "You put him in the role of Jafar?"

"Clever man, Data," Q smiled. "The lamp was a transformational matrix that pulled him inside to a specially constructed micro-reality. To quote the movie, phenominal cosmic power, itty-bitty living space. But it won't hold him long. He's right. In terms of raw power, he's my superior."

"There are levels of power within the Q?" Picard asked, frowning.

Q shook his head. "Not exactly. Our power is in our wills. What we desire to happen, happens. If two Q have conflicting desires, the one with the strongest will wins. If I were to, oh, try to wish him into nothingness, I'd get pulped. His will would knock my efforts right back at me."

"Why? Why is his will stronger?"

"He has a ... forceful personality," Q smiled, ruefully. "In basic terms, he's more single-minded than I am. Once he sets his mind on something, he will literally rearrange existence to achieve it. I can't match that. I'm more ... flexible."

"Hmpf. You mean flighty," Will snorted. Q looked affronted, and Picard hid a grin behind his hand. Then Q relented, and grinned too.

"Whatever," he scoffed. "The fact remains, that micro-reality is a construct of my will. The only thing holding him there is my desire that he remain. In time, he'll beat that."

"How much time?"

"Not enough. He's pushing already. He won't accept defeat. Ten, maybe twelve minutes, on this temporal plane. A couple of years in the reality he's entered."

"Then we have to figure out how to stop him," Picard stated decisively. Now that he had a clear task, with tools at his disposal capable of solving the problem, he felt much better. That worried him slightly. How had the other Q known how to put him off so badly?

"That's my fault, I'm afraid," Q said softly. "Part of my tests of you were to see how you reacted to different types of pressure. Personal pressure was an element."

"You mean all that ... posturing, interfering with my personal space, that was only a test?"

Q looked uncomfortable. "Well ... In part. But it's part of my personality, too. Probably why they let me test you. Probably why they choose to let me test most people. I, um, enjoy it. Unlike most Q, who take on species as a whole, I tend to gravitate to individuals. Representatives. Challengers. You, in other words. Humanity is the species I'm most proud of, of the ones I've chosen to represent to the Continuum."

"Are you saying the Q take species as ... experiments? That you act as ... patrons, sponsors?" Picard asked incredulously. "Is it some kind of competition?"

Q shrugged. "To a degree. It _was_, back when humanity was young. Back when the Q still had interest in these things. I generally won. I always picked the species with a natural perversity, you see. Species that would resist manipulation as a matter of course. Species that were always striving, pushing, fighting for wider horizons. Most of the alpha quadrant is dominated by my representatives. But I lost the delta quadrant. That's actually his major problem with me. His species is still fighting too, and the only species that have successfully resisted them so far have been mine."

Picard looked at the 'lamp', a sudden dark suspicion growing in his mind. "What species does he sponsor?" he asked slowly. Q smiled sadly.

"Haven't you guessed, mon capitaine? From his personality? Singleminded, obsessed with order, with compliance to authority, with acting in unity? His ideal Continuum acts as a unit, every individual Q a part of the whole, performing their respective tasks with efficiency. Individuality forever subject to the greater cause, personal choice subject to the will of the whole, individuals mere extensions of the central will. Absorbing all possible permutations into the central grid." That rueful smile flickered back into existence. "Remind you of anyone?"

"The Borg," Picard whispered. "He chose the Borg."

"I suppose you thought your introduction to them was a fit of pique?" Picard shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, you were right. You _weren't_ ready. And I hate losing. I wanted to beat him, and you were my best chance. You _had_ to be ready when he came for you."

"If you have been in conflict, through mortals, for millennia," Data asked, "why is it escalating into personal conflict now?"

Q acknowledged the query ruefully. "Because I escalated it. Events in the Continuum came to a head recently, at my prompting. We had ourselves a little civil war, and with the aid of some creative thinking, and humans, I won. Well, not exactly won, but forced a compromise."

"What?!"

"He won the actual war, and nearly had me executed, but my human ... compatriots ... got them into a stalemate so I could propose an alternate to outright war, namely mating." He looked around. "What? Making a new breed of Q to bring new life to a stagnating society? Made perfect sense to me. Of course, parenting itself was a bit more of a challenge, but ... Why are we talking about this?"

"Allow me to get this straight," Deanna asked slowly. "_You_ had a _child_?"

"Yes!" Q snapped defensively. "But we're wasting time! We've about five minutes to come up with a solution to a suicidal Q who's determined to take us with him!"

"Suicidal?!" Picard snapped. "How'd you reach that conclusion?"

"Because he came here to taunt me. He came here and did ... what he did ... to make me angry. It's against the will of the Continuum, so he'll die anyway, but he wanted either to take me with him, or get killed in battle. Which would be ironic, because I never took him for a Klingon."

Picard felt a sudden urge to laugh. "That's it! That's it! He's already lost! If this is a personal battle, then he's already lost. He's defied the Continuum. He's made an individual decision. He's chosen your path. _That's_ the irony. In trying to destroy you, he's ultimately lost!"

Q shook his head. "Which is all well and good, and believe me I'm thrilled, but that won't help us now. He's _suicidal_. Do you have any idea how dangerous a suicidal Q is? We're immortal. We cannot die by any normal means. That means we have to invent a way a provoke the only power capable of destroying an individual Q. The Continuum. He's decided to do that by committing the ultimate crime among us. Trying to destroy another Q. Add to that the fact that he's the most single-minded individual you are _ever_ likely to meet, and I'd say we're in a lot of trouble. He can't kill me, or at least I don't think he can, but you don't have that advantage."

"There has to be a reason he chose you," Picard argued, a touch desperately. Now was not the time for Q to be his usual cynical self. They needed options, not nay-sayers.

"You mean besides a couple of billion years of enmity?" Q retorted sarcastically.

"Yes! He must have known that he'd be conceding defeat if he did this! If he's as arrogant as you are, there would have to be a compelling reason to humiliate himself like that ..."

"It's simple actually," a voice drawled. Q closed his eyes briefly, then glanced an apology at them. The other Q appeared behind him, one hand on his shoulder. "If all that's left of you by the time they deal with me is a quivering heap of semi-sentient jelly, which of us do you think should feel humiliated?"

Q smiled brightly, like the glitter of broken glass. "Oh, I don't know. That depends on how close you come to actually achieving that goal."

The entity leaned in to whisper in his ear. "Can you fight me, _and_ defend them? Q?"

"Want to play a game?" Q asked.

"Oh no, Q. No challenges. No games. I'm going to tear you, and your precious humans, apart. No games, no rules, no chances. I'll feed you to the Borg."

Q reached up and caught the hand that held him, spinning so that he and the other Q were face to face. He smirked. "Am I permitted some last words?"

"No!"

"Too bad. I've got three." Q smiled evilly, raw, desperate mischief dancing in his eyes. Picard braced.

"Tag. You're it!"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

That was chapter one, people. R&R, if you liked. If you didn't, do it anyway. I can take a little yelling.


	2. Chapter 2

This is for Yashida, who made a point of asking for it. I apologise for the lateness. I am absolutely crap when it comes to updating. Ask anyone who's almost given up waiting for updates on my longer HP stories. Basically, I'm telling you to enjoy this while it lasts, which is presumptuous in the extreme, as it may be complete crap and no-one's actually reading at all. Oh well.

PS: after some tiny piece of research into star trek timelines (Hallelujah for the internet!), decided that this is set 2377 AD, after Q2, before Nemesis. Hope that further obvious mistakes don't offend too many people.

Disclaimer: I'm counting this story as disclaimered from now on. I include all subsequent chapters in this disclaimer. I don't own Star Trek. I don't even know who does. Okay?

Fair Maiden's Honour

Chapter 2

_"Tag. You're it!"_

White light flashed around them, once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Jean-Luc felt his gorge rise in reaction, some sense of momentum and impossible distance twisting his gut in panic. He made absolutely sure not to let it show, but he thought he might actually hate the Q method of interstellar travel. A transporter beam was fine, but jumping clear across the galaxy at a moment's notice was something he doubted he'd ever get used to. Which was just as well, really.

The star-hopping paused after the third jump, and Picard took the opportunity to drop back into the safety of his chair. Blinking to clear his vision, he barked out a request for their location. Data, unflappable as always, was quick with an answer.

"We appear to be somewhere in the Delta Quadrant, Captain," the android stated calmly, running a professional eye across his instruments. "There is a starship off our port bow." He turned to face them. "It's the Voyager, sir."

"Voyager!" Riker exclaimed. Picard understood his surprise. The Federation had known for some time that the ship they'd thought lost was stranded still in the Delta Quadrant, under the capable command of one Captain Janeway, but it was somewhat surprising to drop by via Q. What could the unpredictable entity want here?

"Back in a moment, Jean-Luc," said entity warned. "If our friend drops by before I do, call me, won't you?" He flashed out before Picard could think up an appropriate answer.

"Captain, Voyager is hailing," Data informed him.

"Onscreen." The curious face of Captain Kathyrn Janeway appeared onscreen, a pensive expression in her eyes.

"Enterprise? Not that we aren't happy to see you, but what are you doing in the Delta Quadrant?"

Picard frowned slightly. "Q," he explained tersely. It appeared to be all the explanation she required. Voyager had obviously had first hand experience of their misanthropic friend. A hint of humour flicker briefly in her eyes.

"I see," she smiled. "My condolences. Any idea what he wants?"

"We're in serious trouble, Kathy," Q's voice sounded. Picard glanced around for the signature light, before realising that the entity had manifested on the other bridge. Janeway appeared supremely unconcerned about his impromptu appearance, but his words brought a quick frown to her face.

"What kind of trouble?" she asked brusquely.

"Quinn, times ten, and homocidal to boot," Q explained. Jean-Luc frowned. Quinn? But Q went on, obviously sure that Janeway understood him. "He's trying to destroy me, and my humans."

"_Your _humans!?" Picard and Janeway barked simultaneously, sharing a quick look once they realised what they'd done. Q only rolled his eyes ostentatiously.

"Yes. _My_ humans. Enterprise first, but I wouldn't bet on him ignoring you, and after what he tried with Jean-Luc, I'm not taking the risk. Junior and I are taking the lot of you to a safe place."

"Safe place?" Voyager's second-in-command asked incredulously.

"Junior?" Will spluttered. A light flashed beside him, and to a man, every member of the bridge crew jumped to their feet to face the enemy. The youth who emerged from the light, mouth open to say something sarcastic, paused in surprise. Picard stared.

"Um, Dad?" the new arrival muttered. "Little help?"

Q sighed. "Enterprise, meet Q Jr. My son. Q, the hairy one at your shoulder is Riker, the bald one in the chair is Jean-Luc Picard, the black-haired babe is Troi, off limits, if you please. The guy with the grill on his face is LaForge, and the man-machine is Data. Don't annoy them. The only one with a sense of humour is Data, whatever sense _that_ makes."

Picard resisted the temptation to drop his head into his hands only with difficulty. Various expressions of affront, resignation, and curiosity formed on his crew's faces. Janeway looked on them in commiseration. Vintage Q introduction, designed to offend as many people as possible. And if this youth was _Q's_ son, a concept Jean-Luc still had a hard time grasping, then odds were he was a chip off the old block. It really was amazing. Fleeing for their lives, after a rather traumatic experience, and the primary emotion he felt with Q was _still_ exasperation. In a strange way, it was almost reassuring. Despite all the bizarre things tossed at them through Q in the last few hours, at least _that_ was consistent.

A hand appeared in his line of sight, and he looked up quickly. The younger Q was offering to shake. Picard blinked once, then accepted the gesture firmly.

"Pleased to meet you, sir," Q Jr. said respectfully. "Father's told me so much about you. He's quite impressed with you. Personally, I think no-one can top Aunt Kathy ... I mean, Captain Janeway, but he says you're quite good, for a human."

Picard stared. He couldn't help it. The mix of respect and arrogance in the youth's tone was putting him off a bit. A Q, being _polite_? Then he got his explanation.

"_Sir!?_" Q repeated, incredulously. "Kathy, darling, what have you been teaching this boy? I sent him to you to pick up a sense of responsibility, not an obsequious manner like _that_! Are you _trying_ to ruin my reputation?"

_Ah_. The thought was visible in his crew's faces, as if the word was floating in big letters over their heads. Jean-Luc's respect for Janeway climbed another notch. No mean feat, teaching a Q manners.

"Q," Janeway interupted. "Interesting as this introduction is, hadn't you better explain what's going on? If this threat is as serious as you say, hadn't we better get moving?" Picard nodded his agreement.

"Can't we fight him, Dad?" Q Jr. asked abruptly. Q looked at him, an odd expression on his face. Q Jr. continued hurriedly. "I mean, after we get Aunt Kathy and the Enterprise to a safe place? If there's only one of him, and two of us ... Because we can't let him get near them. I mean ..."

The expression on the boy's father's face had resolved itself into a mix of pride and exasperation, with a touch of sorrow skulking below the surface. Q smiled warmly at his son, and opened his mouth ...

"What are you, an idiot?" he barked, sharply. "Do you think I'd be running over half the galaxy if I thought I could _fight_ him. It's _Q_, for pity's sake! The strongest will in the Continuum, and you think you can just go outside and poof!, he's toast!? Well, you must be getting that kind of stupidity from your mother's side, because _I _was never as much of an idiot!"

"Q!" Janeway reproached, but the object of the entity's scorn butted in.

"Yeah, well, I didn't know basic maths was beyond you, Father!" the younger Q snarled right back, head up and chest out so far he was within an inch of falling backwards, the whole of him vibrating with righteous fury. "One plus one equals two, you geriatric abacus, and two versus one equals victory! Want me to repeat it slowly for you?" The sarcasm practically dripped from his tone.

"Well, he's definitely Q's," Will said in an undertone, a slight twitch of his eyebrow betraying his humour. Jean-Luc was compelled to agree, as, apparently, were the crew in the bridge on the other side of the viewer. Janeway's face was conspicuously devoid of any emotion, but the corner of her mouth was twitching slightly.

"Impetuous little brat, isn't he?" a cold voice drawled, as yet disembodied, and Voyager blinked out of existence. Picard leapt forward automatically. Ships didn't usually up and disappear in front of you. "Data!" he snapped anxiously.

"Don't panic yet, Jean-Luc," Q admonished, appearing at his side. "That was my doing, not his."

"And which you are you?" Picard growled back. Q turned to face him, staring him in the eyes calmly, giving him time to assess the entity. Then Q's lips curled slightly, mischief and worry in his face.

"Much as I enjoy this, and believe me I could stare into your eyes for eternity, Jean-Luc, we have to move. Junior!" He spun to face his son. "Get the Enterprise out of here. Join Voyager, and wait. I'm going to slow him down."

"What!?" Q Jr. asked, angrily. "If you think I'm leaving you alone ..."

"And how do you plan to slow me down, Q? Do tell." The entity who'd chased them appeared, with no flash to warn them, beside Will. His first officer whirled into a defensive crouch, Geordi ready with a phaser beside him. But the intruder, still in Q's form, had all his attention on Q Jr, much to the consternation of the boy's father.

"The first Q child in the New Era," the stranger mused. "And you have to be the spawn of _that_ pathetic excuse for a Q," he nodded dismissively at Q, "and his airheaded mate. Such a pity, really. You could have been great, had you had better parents."

The young Q didn't respond well to that, anger flashing in his eyes. He took a vibrating half-step towards the older entity, before an angry snap of Q's wrist stopped him. "Maybe," Q's son growled menacingly, "if anyone else in your stupid, stilted Continuum had had the _guts_ and _brains_ to do anything besides sit there or kick the hell out of each other, if they'd had the basic intelligence required to make the jump to another solution, you wouldn't have that problem! But since you were all such a bunch of self-righteous, semi-evolved _idiots_ after all, I guess you'll just have to lump it, won't you!"

"Yep. Definitely Q's," Will muttered under his breath, braced for the backlash to that defiant, if ill-advised, statement. Jean-Luc was busy staring at Q, who was wearing an expression of such stunned bemusement and reluctant caring that the phrase 'gobsmacked' was probably applicable, and suddenly a smile sprang unbidden to the Captain's face. Q was completely, utterly, and undeniably a Dad, and a proud one at that. Who would have thought it?

The strange Q was nowhere near as impressed. Distilled, liquid rage poured over the features he'd borrowed from Q, twisting the familiar face into something terrible and undeniably foreign. Again, Picard had that sense of time crystallising.

The entity raised a menacing hand to the young Q, deadly intent glittering in his eyes. Q raised his own hand in desperate defense. Q Jr, fear suddenly leaping into his face, tried to backpedal. Will, latent paternal instincts kicking in, moved to get between the boy and the threat. Deanna moved to protect Will. Everyone seemed to be in motion, but slowly, so very slowly, and soundlessly, to Picard's senses. Then two sets of ersatz fingers snapped, several voices cried out, and once again white light wiped the universe away.

When reality returned, if indeed it _was_ reality, which could be difficult to determine when Q was involved, even the languid pace of the previous moment was gone. Time seemed to have stopped, a genuine moment frozen in time, trapped in the amber of a Q's will. Or Qs', plural. His body wouldn't move, a distant anchor only tentatively connected to his mind, and one extremely petty part of Jean-Luc was glad of that, because motion sickness had definitely set in. But most of him was preoccupied with the silent scene before him.

The ship sat in a frozen glacier of time, the starfield beyond the viewer static and electrified, like a freeze-frame on an ancient television set. If he stared at it, shifting eddies seemed to ripple through it, refracting reality into splintered shards then smoothing them away, flows of power straining against each other, unable to gain ground. While part of him knew that this was only an analogy, a desperate atempt on the part of his mind to translate what was happening into an experience it could understand, still the sight sent a shimmer of fear through the core of him, and he turned his attention away, to the cause of the problem.

The two Q faced each other in the center of the bridge, their figures the only life-like things in this new, static world, each a sketch of concentration, determination, and strain. Around them, bathed in the weird other-light of timelessness, stood caricatures of his crew, bodies unmoving in a grisly game of musical statues, made strange and ugly by the lack of life. A phrase of Q's sprang to mind, _"a normal, LUMPEN human being"_, and here they seemed so, devoid of the enlightening characteristics of the personalities that drove them. Even Q Jr, his powers apparently overwritten by one or both of the older Q, was presented in that hard, ugly light, calcified in that unworthy attitude of fear.

But beyond that reality, beyond the intrinsic hideousness of those corpse-like figures, lay something else. Overlaying the waxen features were ... shadows, coloured and scintillating, auras that seemed to name themselves in his mind, and Jean-Luc realised he was seeing their minds, or a translation of them, the personalities that Q timelessness had stripped from their physical forms. For a second, he balked at the thought, knowing that he was no telepath, that it was impossible, but soon his rationality kicked in, putting the phenomenon down to a side-effect of the otherworldliness of the Q, and focusing on what the hell was going on.

_You cannot hold me forever, Q. _The stranger's 'voice' sounded, a bitter whipcrack across his mind, and the other shadow-minds flinched away from it, a spiked ripple across the static stars echoing the movement. Q seemed to falter, a weight pressing down on him, but then Picard caught a flicker of movement, somewhere in his mental blindspot, and the stranger retreated slightly. A strained grin appeared momentarily on Q's face.

_You'd be surprised, Oh Fearsome One,_ came the reply, an impish sally across the mind-field. _But I have no intention of making the attempt._

_Why not?_ A tinge of panic edged the demand.

_Because our audience is due, my fearless foe, any moment now._

Fear and rage flashed over the twisted features of Q's doppelganger, and a vicious shard of reality launched itself ... _backwards_, towards the younger Q's immobile form, and Q roared in sudden fury, eddies of power whipping out from the shadowed corners of refracted reality to converge on that underhanded assault and bear it down, pulling it forcibly away from his threatened son. Q roared again, this time in pain, as one arm seemed to crumple against his side. Picard's mind, unused to operating on these terms, struggled to figure out what had happened, but focusing on the backdrop of reality, realised that the stranger had driven a spike of power through the vacuum left by Q's defense of his son, and torn a chunk out of Q's side of the mind-field.

Face gone pale with strain, Q straightened and focused. His enemy flinched, and the intruding force seemed to flicker ... The enemy regrouped and reality seemed to bend, somehow ... Q's side of the mind-field contracted and suddenly bloomed with vicious spikes ... A hammer-blow flattened the reality between them, and Q moaned with pain ... Eddies swirled back and forth, flickers of motion so fast they lost all meaning ...

Jean-Luc felt like screaming. He couldn't see what was going on. His mind wasn't translating fast enough, his analogies inadequate for the task, and he could feel his thoughts stretch unbearably in an effort to encompass the situation. He could sense the others, minds darting agitatedly, plagued by similar problems. Only the young Q seemed to grasp what was going on, and his agitation stemmed from far different concerns. Namely, that Q was losing the battle. Even if he couldn't grasp _why_, Picard could see that. And there was nothing he could do about it. He was helpless in Q hands.

Then Q straightened, raising his hands as if to force all foreign influence away from him, and his 'voice' lashed out across the mind-field, a command so deep and strident that even his enemy obeyed.

_STOP!_

Silence crashed down around them, stillness seizing even the edgy flickers of power in a grip so profound it seemed nothing could break it. And in that stillness, Picard sensed the descent of a presence, a pressure of attention that forced reality to bend before it, and he realised that Q's 'audience' had arrived. Or at least deigned to finally start paying attention. The Continuum.

Three figures materialised on his bridge, a bridge that he couldn't help but feel was becoming overcrowded. Aged, steeped in dignity, the trio frowned at the scene, and in particular the two taut figures at its center, their conflicting presences a magnet for the attention of even these powerful beings.

"Q," one of them began, and Picard realised with a start that she was speaking aloud, the humanoid way, and on the heels of that realisation came the sickening sensation of his consciousness plunging back into his body, all extra-sensory perceptions ripped away and replaced by a tumultuous rebellion by his suddenly existant stomach. He dropped into his chair as if his strings had been cut, and around him his crew staggered, sat down, or simply dropped where they stood, the same expression of stunned nausea on all their faces. Only the six Q were unaffected, and of them, one was a young man whose face was rapidly turning green, and two were poised in positions of wounded readiness that belied any attempt at calm. The three newcomers were an island of calm and dignity in their midst.

The female Q raised an imperious eyebrow at the consternation her word had caused, and after a moment began again, as if annoyed that human fraility had necessitated the repetition of one lousy word. Picard knew a moment of instantaneous hatred for her, that settled into mere dislike in moments as his more diplomatic nature reasserted itself. But he felt a flicker of wry acknowledgement in the back of his mind, and caught Q's knowing eye.

"Q," she went on, and Picard knew that she meant the other Q, although he still couldn't say how. "This has gone far enough. And you, Q. You are beginning to impinge on the Continuum."

"Naturally," Q smirked, as if that had been his aim all along, and of course it had been. Only the Continuum could stop this other Q, so of course he'd gotten their attention. The three frowned severly at him.

"You will return with us to the Continuum, and you, Q, will remove that starship you so cavalierly placed in our midst."

Picard started at that. In the panic, he'd forgotten all about Voyager. Q shrugged, smiling that vaguely condescending smile of his, and raised his hand to snap ...

"No!" his doppelganger snapped. "I will not allow it."

Pressure dropped on them, a pounding presence on all sides as the other Q pulled power to himself, and Picard felt reality compress, as if it were being gathered up into a bunch. The trio of aged Q started violently, consternation and panic flashing through them, and Picard realised that they, too, were afraid of this other Q. Even the _representatives of the Continuum itself_ feared him. What the devil was he supposed to do, then?

"A game, then!"

The cheerful voice chopped through the building pressure, cutting through all that power like it was butter as the stranger turned to face Q in shock. He wasn't alone. The trio were staring at Q as if he were some strange specimen that had suddenly crawled out from under a rock, Q Jr looked to be trying to convince himself that he hadn't actually heard his father say something so stupid, and Picard could _see_ Will thinking 'Idiot' loudly to himself. He knew his own features were poised between shock, disbelief, and a kind of wild humour that had suddenly blossomed inside him.

Q preened under their incredulous gazes, exulting in the attention even with an arm crumpled messily at his side and features pulled taut by strain. He tilted his head coquettishly, and smiled that Puckish grin at the aged trio, arrogant challenge in every line of him, and Jean-Luc repressed a sudden urge to order the computer to capture an image of the moment, to capture that childishly defiant figure in all its irrepressable glory. He had no idea where the impulse had come from, but it burst inside his consciousness like a bombshell, and he was left cradling an unknown feeling that compressed his heart in his chest and shunted his mind sideways for one endless, dangerous moment. Then reality snapped back into place, leaving him wondering what the hell had happened.

"What!" the stranger demanded, echoed a nanosecond later by the trio. Q grinned, sliding a knowing smirk in Jean-Luc's direction before responding.

"Really, it _should_ be obvious, even to you." Insult dripped from the tone, and it was so familiar to him that only when Picard noticed the quiver of shock that went through the aged trio of Q did he realise what Q was doing. He was addressing his superiors the way he would address Picard or any other 'lesser' being. It was only then that Picard realised how truly angry Q was. Everything that mattered to him; his son, his humans, his life; were all being threatened, and Q _did not forgive that_. He was as furious with the Continuum as he was with the strange Q, and that was a very dangerous emotion for a weakened, renegade Q to indulge in. But the knowledge of his apparent weakness did nothing to stop him.

"I propose to give everyone here a chance to get what they want," Q continued, gesturing grandly with his usable arm. "To give Q here a chance to wipe me out, to give my son a demonstration of what his father can do, to give the humans a chance at safety, to give the Continuum the entertainment it so desires."

"How?" the female demanded brusquely.

Q smiled. "A game, of course. With rules and everything." He shot a mocking look at his enemy, who snarled.

"Explain." Again, the demand.

"Simple. I propose that you, my son, and Enterprise adjourn to the Continuum, where you can join Voyager and whatever Q want to watch the show." For a second, the smile turned bitter, then returned to its usual challenging self. "Meanwhile, Q and I shall remain in normal reality, and ... work out our differences. In single combat. The only rules being that neither can use sentient beings to further their cause, and whoever wins has to repair all the damage caused by the game."

"And the loser?" the other Q cut in, hunger in his eyes.

"Why, the loser is remanded to the custody of the Continuum, of course," Q smiled, but there was a darkness behind it, a glimmer of sinister intent that would have worried any sane opponent, and did worry Picard. Quite a lot. But the strange Q was oblivious, and the aged Q simply huffed as if it were their due and only common sense.

"Well? How about it?"

"Agreed!" the stranger snapped readily, and shot a glare at the trio, who nodded grudgingly.

"Agreed. We will monitor you from the Continuum, and if either of you break the rules ..."

"Yes?" the strange Q sneered, nastily, and the female fell silent.

"Then it is agreed!" Q clapped his hands in childish glee, and turned to snap his fingers.

This time the white flash was all-encompassing, and seemed to last far longer than ever before, and Picard shut his eyes against it. He felt strangely reluctant to open them again afterwards, knowing that he'd be inside the Continuum itself, and not trusting his mind to cope after all the strain it had gone through recently. Then he felt a hand on his arm, and opened his eyes to blink in startlement at Deanna.

"Look, captain," she said softly, and as she moved off to help Will, he did.

He stood on what appeared to be a platform encased in transparent aluminium, orbiting a deep-space docking station. Enterprise hung serenely in space at his side, rubbing shoulders with her weary, Delta-marooned sister as if to lend Voyager her strength. In contrast, on the platform, it was Voyager's crew who moved to support the frazzled Enterprisers, sitting them down on scattered seating or proping them up against railings. It appeared to be only command crew on this platform, and with a flash of concern Picard turned to search for the rest of his crew.

"They're below us," came a steady voice at his side, and he turned to face Cpt. Janeway. The woman radiated strength and calm assurance, and for a moment Picard felt an irrational burst of jealousy for her poise, swiftly replaced by what looked to be an induring respect. He followed her pointed finger, and found a larger, lower platform tethered beneath and before their smaller one, the second tier in the orbital arrangement. _Like an old-fashioned theater_, he mused, _with the commoners in the stands while the aristocracy take the box seats._ Then Janeway, seeming to catch his thought, pointed upwards and to the rear, and there, of course, were the true 'aristocracy'.

Reclining in elegant seats on the smallest of the platforms, those members of the Continuum who deigned to show up gazed regally down, past the command platform, out beyond the 'stands' and into the shimmering 'viewscreen' that stretched for a lightyear or two out beyond the station, presumably where they would view Q's struggle. At the center of the 'royal' platform, all but enthroned, sat the trio of ancient Q.

_No. Not the theater,_ he thought darkly. _The Roman Coliseum. We've come to watch the bloodsport._

"Pretentious, aren't they?" Someone asked from behind him, and he glanced sideways to see a pair of strangers. Janeway blinked at the red-headed female, while the blonde male seemed to focus on Picard. "You'd think after a couple of billion years they'd get over themselves. But don't tell them I said that."

"Who ...?" Picard blinked, and the man started and shook his head as if shocked at his own rudeness.

"Sorry. I'm Q, and this is Q. She's Q's mate, you know."

"_Was_ Q's mate," the female interupted snittily.

"Oh, yes, forgive me ..." the new Q started to apologise, when Janeway interupted coldly.

"Yes, after you abandoned him and your son when you found rearing a child took up too much of your 'valuable' time," Voyager's captain drawled disgustedly, and her Q counterpart stiffened angrily.

"It was Q's decision as much as mine!" she snapped.

"Yes! Q decided to stick with his son! He even swallowed his pride enough to ask for my help when he figured out that he couldn't do it alone! You, on the other hand, left the moment things looked like they were getting difficult!" Janeway pratically quivered with righteous anger, and Picard decided to step in, calling on every diplomatic reserve he had.

"Captain. Q. I realise this is an old issue between you, but we do have other issues at present ..." he trailed off, quailing before twin frigid glares, while the blonde Q looked at him with a mix of respect and what could only be described as a 'better-you-than-me' look. Thankfully, or not, depending on your point of view, the 'viewscreen' chose that moment to flicker into life, and all other concerns paled as Jean-Luc turned to see Q.

Poised arrogantly in space, magnified against a backdrop of galactic proportions, Q faced his enemy. He'd fixed his arm, and all other traces of strain were either gone or cleverly disguised as he lounged back against a white dwarf in instinctively nonchalent pose, a quiet smirk glimmering in the shadows of his face.

"He's taken a dip from the well," one of the Q muttered beside Picard as the captains' party maneuvered its way to the front of the platform, the rest of the command crew ranged behind them. Picard caught a glimpse of Amanda standing with Beverly, and Q Jr with a group of Voyager crew. But his attention was soon rivetted back to the scene that began to play itself out before their eyes.

The stranger had dropped his facsimile of Q's human form, taking instead that of a powerfully built man somewhere in his fifties, with an ugly look of triumph about him. Premature, Picard would have said, if he hadn't seen Q almost pulped by him earlier. As it was, his stomach was quietly twisting itself into a french braid inside him, and only the memory of that sinister look in Q's eyes helped allieviate the fear that Q was about to get himself killed. And even that was cold comfort, because any plan of Q's could only serve to get them all in trouble, and Picard was having serious difficulty seeing how things could get any worse.

Some invisible signal was given, presumably from the 'royal box' behind him, and the two Q straightened, Q into an easy stance, a vertical lounge, while the other squared himself combatively. _Ready, steady ..._

"Q!" the other called out, before the final signal could be given. "One thing?"

Q tipped his head to one side with a lazy grin. "Yes?"

"Before, when you said you'd give everyone what they wanted?" There was a nasty smile on the stranger's face.

"Yes?"

"You never told us what it was that _you_ wanted, renegade."

Q paused, and a slow, sinister smile crept over his features and seemed to pull all the darkness of space with it. "Oh, that," he said softly. "That's really quite simple, Q." He inclined his head in a mocking little bow.

"As the harlot said to the apostle, I want your head on a platter."

End chapter 2. Hope that went okay.


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